For SEC first guys, will you be rooting for UGA over Notre Dame and will it help us with recruits?

[05_never_again]

You’re right. It’s sad. So many ways we have screwed up from the top down for the better part of 15 years, hell maybe since December 2001.
People may think I’m nuts, but I think our 2006 was national title good. That was our shot. the 07 team was decent, but flawed and then it all fell apart. Goes to show how important good QB play is. Manning, to Martin, Clausen, to Ainge and then poor coaching gets us here with Dobbs being the exception. We just haven’t been able to put it together.

I personally think the line of demarcation was the 2001 SECCG, but who knows. This is hindsight bias talking perhaps, but the program has never "felt" quite the same after that. The 2001 season would be looked at as a continuation of the 1990s dominance if we beat LSU; that's why I've always marked Phil's real "glory years" as being from 1995-01. That would've been 3 SEC titles and 1 (at least, although I don't think we were beating Miami) national titles in 7 years. All while going 73-14 (47-9!) over that stretch, and 5 of the 9 conference losses were to a single team. It wasn't Saban-level dominance (nothing else is), but there aren't many dominant runs like that by other programs.

Throughout his career, even when we were winning SEC/national titles, Phil's teams had this strange but consistent tendency to play well when expectations were relatively low and disappoint when expectations were relatively high, both on a game-by-game and season-by-season basis. From 1995-97, Tennessee was arguably a more talented team on paper than Florida. Coming into the 1998 season the general feeling was "We'll still be pretty good but we missed our window." The 1999 and 2000 teams underachieved. The 2001 team was thought to have zero chance to beat Florida, then was considered a shoo-in for the national title game; neither event occurred. The 2002 team badly underachieved (preseason #4, finished 8-5 and unranked). In 2004 everybody thought Georgia was the team to beat in the East. The 2005 team was probably the most disappointing Tennessee team in history and is the reason for my username (preseason #3, finished 5-6 and unranked). In Phil's final year they started the season ranked and went 5-7.